Where does my brain go at night?

The singer Bjork is eating the roses off the bushes of a house nearby.  It’s just something she likes to do.  I decide they must be tasty and I should try one.  I turn the bike around in the street to go back to the rose bushes but I see my ex girlfriend, walking about 30 feet away from Bjork.

“She’s out here too?” I think.  “Uh oh.  The two of them are bound to get to know each other, and then she’ll will find out that I scheduled a date with Bjork for Sunday.  I think I’m still in a relationship with her. Wait, am I? What’s my situation? Didn’t we break up like, half a year ago?”

I turn the bike back around, knowing that if I get close to either of them they’ll just walk away from me. They want private time.  So, am I seeing other people, or dating again, or am I still with my ex?  I can’t remember.  We need to talk.

I wake up in an unfamiliar bedroom.  I think it’s the house I share with my ex.  I hear kitchen sounds in the distance.  “Well, that’s probably her.  I better get this over with.”  I roll out of bed and pick up my pants, which I have trouble putting on because there’s something jammed in one of the legs.  I reach in and extract my phone.

She walks into the room.  “Okay, here we go,” I think.  But instead of seeming worried like I am, she’s relaxed.  She’s also wearing no clothing except for underwear.

“Follow me,” she says urgently, and walks into a different room.  There’s another bed here.  She dives onto it, then reaches into a bedside drawer and pulls out a condom in a clear plastic wrapper, and flicks it onto the covers.

She wiggles around until she’s partly under the sheets.  I know what I’m supposed to be doing but I’m not feeling into it. Something is still wrong between us. I’m also skeptical of the condom: It looks too colorful, like something you’d find in a bowl at a saucy adult party. “What time of month is it?” I ask her pointedly. Things are already dysfunctional, and having a child on the way might pull us together into a commitment neither of us feels good about. She’s looking at me expectantly, as if to say, “What’s your problem?”

Some friends and relatives of hers wander into the room, carrying groceries and food.  They’re about to throw a Thanksgiving celebration.  She climbs off me immediately.  We can’t have an intimate conversation with all this family around.  Am I the only one who thinks we need a discussion? I get off the bed and walk out of the room.

Night falls instantly.  I’m wandering around the gritty courtyard of a large beat-up hotel.  The walls are charcoal colored, like either a deliberately spooky paint job, or just a phenomenal amount of decay.  People are emerging from the doors and windows of the hotel and wandering around in small groups.  There is a party-like atmosphere.  I look down and see several coins in the dirt, and pick them up.  One is a very thick coin with dull round edges, as big as a silver dollar.  I turn it over in my hand and notice that it is stamped with a year far into the future, somewhere in the next millennium.

Impressed with the coin, I begin waving it around and singing an improvised song, in the style of They Might Be Giants:

Hey look!  It’s:
MONEY FROM THE FUTUUUURE
Who knows what you can spend it on
When all of civilization’s gone?
How valuable is this techno-coin?
Come on everyone, let’s join
The search for
MONEY FROM THE FUTUURRRE
Check it out, it’s
MONEY FROM THE FUTUUUURE

-My brain, 4:30am

Music erupts around me.  Some of the people wandering around turn into band members playing instruments, and when one of them starts a wicked guitar solo, I go running down the street, then jump up onto a wall, then run along it and jump onto a roof.  The music fades in the distance.

“Dammit, now what do I do?” I think.

I wake up.